Critique

[SoloGarth]

So I have a new DSLR camera (Nikon D5300) and I am (re)learning all of my photography skills. One thing I have noticed is that taking good pictures within the tank is extremely difficult and more so the farther back into the tank the subject is. I have found that I need full manual control to get good pictures of anything that is >6" away from the glass due to the camera's tendancy to shoot at a high ISO and introduce a ton of noise (I am aware this is a drawback of the DX format as well).

My problem is that while I am able to get some clear shots with decent detail I have had a very hard time reproducing the color (again shots taken of subjects close to the front of the tank aren't as much of a problem). Also there tends to be both sections that are blown out and others that are far to dark and I haven't been able to correct in lightroom sufficiently for this.

The following pic is the clearest I could get of this coral. It is about 13" away from front glass which is 1/2" starfire. P

The picture is shot at 2", F/16 ISO 125 using Nikkor 50mm 1.8G lens.

Any suggestions would be most welcome. . .

 

[IPT]

I'm not a Nikon guy so hopefully Jesse will chime in for you. You are shooting in RAW right? For sure you'll need to shoot manual or at the least use a lot of exposure compensation. You may even have to do some HDR (manual or otherwise) to maintain details throughout your subject.

 

[jroovers]

What lighting are you shooting under? My guess is LEDs, which are very tricky to shoot under. If you vary the intensity (i.e. lower), or experiment with leaving some on and others off, you might get some different results. What are you doing to WB?

 

[SoloGarth]

I'm not a Nikon guy so hopefully Jesse will chime in for you. You are shooting in RAW right? For sure you'll need to shoot manual or at the least use a lot of exposure compensation. You may even have to do some HDR (manual or otherwise) to maintain details throughout your subject.

Yes I am shooting RAW. I have no experience with HDR. I'll have to do some reading but yeah that looks like it could certainly address some of the issues.

 

[SoloGarth]

What lighting are you shooting under? My guess is LEDs, which are very tricky to shoot under. If you vary the intensity (i.e. lower), or experiment with leaving some on and others off, you might get some different results. What are you doing to WB?

Yes LEDs. Radion Gen 2s. I have experimented with changing the color temp a little but didn't see much difference. I'm using the camera's PRE WB using a photo as a measure. I can't tell if it would be better to leave it as is and WB in Lightroom.

 

[IPT]

WB in Lightroom for sure. Manual is the way to go. You'll do a much better job manually in trying to optimize the WB especially under specialized reef tank lighting. You may have to over or under compensate to get the look to actually be more accurate. Sometimes though, especially shooting deep into the tank (through a lot of water) the proper exact spot on WB may still elude you. As mentioned, Reef specific lighting can be tricky.

 

[SoloGarth]

WB in Lightroom for sure. Manual is the way to go. You'll do a much better job manually in trying to optimize the WB especially under specialized reef tank lighting. You may have to over or under compensate to get the look to actually be more accurate. Sometimes though, especially shooting deep into the tank (through a lot of water) the proper exact spot on WB may still elude you. As mentioned, Reef specific lighting can be tricky.

Good to know. Actually one of the main reasons for getting this new camera was my previous camera's (Olympus EPL1) inability to WB. Now that I have it though I realized I really hated everything about that camera and so never wanted to use it. Still debating exchanging this one for a full frame Nikon . . .

 

[jroovers]

How you WB, full frame vs. crop, raw vs. jpeg, etc. isn't going to help you with this issue... shooting under LEDs you are going to get hot spots (ie blow out areas), and that purple magenta halo effect in other areas. It is much easier to shoot under MHs and T5s - if you can, try and shoot under this lighting (even go to another reefer's place with your gear), and you'll see what I mean. Its nothing to do with the camera and what you've done, its the lighting. Try supplementing some of your shots with flash if you can, you may get some more even exposures, especially if you can use it off camera and shoot it at an angle downwards. Also, try using a sheet or something that diffuses the light over top of your tank, but under the LEDs of course (not too close, don't want to start a fire). You might get more diffuse light and eliminate some of the hot spots you are looking to avoid. LR or similar program will allow you flex in post to adjust WB and more importantly hue, tint, and specific colours, as well as try and recover blown out or overexposed areas. And when you find the magic bullet, please let us all know - shooting under LEDs is a PITA, and I know that sentiment is shared by a lot of reefers.

 

[SoloGarth]

Interesting. I hadn't thought that the LEDs would be that large of a problem. I need to experiment more with lighting setting and the flash as you mentioned. For sure the main issues are the blown out areas and purple/magenta halos. I was unable to fix either of those in LR.

My would be that I can find a better LED lighting setting to work with the camera. Just one more group of variables and settings to contend with haha.

 

[noy]

2" is an awfully long exposure time - i suspect the resulting over-exposure is why you are getting the white/blown out areas.

Given how your coral is positioned (across and about 13" away) you might be able to shoot this at F/5.6 (tripod) and see what settings the camera is coming up with if you set it to Av (aperture priority) with spot metering off the coral. Don't worry to much about the ISO at this point and take a few shots and post them to see what they look like. You can adjust the aperture size if you don't like the depth of field.

Take a few shots with bracketing at 1/2 f-stop to see the results.

I often underexpose my shots 1 full stop (gives me a more preferable ISO) and then I adjust this in photoshop.

 

[SoloGarth]

2" is an awfully long exposure time - i suspect the resulting over-exposure is why you are getting the white/blown out areas.



Given how your coral is positioned (across and about 13" away) you might be able to shoot this at F/5.6 (tripod) and see what settings the camera is coming up with if you set it to Av (aperture priority) with spot metering off the coral. Don't worry to much about the ISO at this point and take a few shots and post them to see what they look like. You can adjust the aperture size if you don't like the depth of field.



Take a few shots with bracketing at 1/2 f-stop to see the results.



I often underexpose my shots 1 full stop (gives me a more preferable ISO) and then I adjust this in photoshop.

Great thanks. I will try this tomorrow. All tank shots I take with a tripod. Spot metering "of" the coral or "off" the coral?

My concern over the ISO is that previous pics in A or P mode used far too high an ISO and the whole image in the tank past 6" would have far too much noise. I need to determine highest acceptable ISO and set that as max.

 

[noy]

Take the spot metering while pointed at the coral itself

 

[SoloGarth]

Ok yeah that is what I figured.

 

[jroovers]

My concern over the ISO is that previous pics in A or P mode used far too high an ISO and the whole image in the tank past 6" would have far too much noise. I need to determine highest acceptable ISO and set that as max.

What ISOs are you shooting at? You certainly should be able to push the envelope a bit, at least up to 1600, to test the water. Reducing noise in post is relatively easy with a decent program such as LR.

 

[Misled]

I agree with all the above. Turn off the auto ISO. You can set it to 400 to 800, some Nikons suck above 800. Set WB to auto. Don't try to get it right in the camera, do it in LR or PS after. You can experiment with the LED's from there. I always try to under expose then adjust exposure and lighten shadows in PS. If you just want to try something quick, turn the LED's down so you are just lighting the tank to see things somewhat in room brightness. Keep the blues lower than the whites. Set the tripod so the front of the lens is against the glass of the tank. You can open the on camera flash and not have a reflection this way. Also follow all the other rules, (turn off pumps, let the tank settle for a few minutes). Post some more pics of your trys.

 

[patheticsquid]

Rather than setting WB to Auto, set it to something like Shade. This way you can get a bearing for how much correction you are applying in post to the temperature and tint of your pictures for accurate colour reproduction. The other tips in this thread are great; motion and reflection can both be very problematic.

I've never found LEDs particularly hard to shoot under. Hot spots are a reality with many of the corals you are going to photograph. As you are shooting perpendicular to the glass you probably only have one angle at which you can take a sharp photograph, and many corals shade themselves, especially branching ones like acropora. I use two ways to get around this, either use an actinic flashlight to provide some photosynthetic light to the shaded area, or go underwater with your camera for a different angle.

Do not use a built-in flash to shoot corals. You cannot use a built-in or ring flash without getting glare off your glass, it requires a remotely operated flash at a specific angle.

The colour of your lighting should be whatever makes your subject look best. I disagree that there generally should be more white than blue, or more any specific colour. You should be shooting what makes your subject look how you'd like it to through the viewfinder and then match the white balance (remember this is both temperature and tint) in post to what you see in the viewfinder. The best way to do this is to use either a piece of rock or sediment as your colour. If your rock is blue and it looked grey to you, it doesn't mean your blue lighting is too intense, it means you need to adjust the white balance to make it look grey.

 

[Misled]

Do not use a built-in flash to shoot corals. You cannot use a built-in or ring flash without getting glare off your glass, it requires a remotely operated flash at a specific angle.

You can if the front of the lens is against the glass.

 

[IPT]

The flash could be a good idea. An off the camera solution (wire) is pretty cheap if you have an external flash. I also tend to under expose vs what the meter says. that said it's my understanding that with digital it's best to expose for the highlights (you might still be underexposing the image as a total but if you were spot metering you'd be over exposing the highlights as much as you could without losing detail). Your better off post processing pulling the exposure down, then up. Pulling down assures you have detail in the shadows but have maintained your highlight detail. If you under expose and try to pull up the shadows there is an increased issue of noise in the shadows - thus the reason to allow the exposure to catch all the shadow detail initially. Though i think Nikon had the slight edge with shadow noise vs Canon (which I use).

Personally I usually just bracket and then blend in PS. That or I will err on the side of over exposure then pull it down. With high contrast subjects though I find it essentially a necessity to blend exposures. Hence the reason so many people are liking the Sony and other non DSLR rigs. Apparently the Dynamic range is greater so you can get it all in one frame.

 

[SoloGarth]

Ok so I have made a second attempt. I tried f/5.6 but the depth of field didnt work for this coral as it left much of it out of focus. I used f/16 for all of these shots, spot metering on the coral, left the WB in auto and adjusted in LR.

I took the same shot at different color temps at 40% on the radions. Still experiencing a lot of "halo" effect that is hard to compensate for. I tried using the flash but there was too much reflection and it was unusable. An external flash is next on the list.

Lighting: 7500 Kelvin | Shutter Speed: .4" | ISO 450

Lighting: 10000 Kelvin | Shutter Speed: .8" | ISO 220

Lighting: 12000 Kelvin | Shutter Speed: .8" | ISO 320

Lighting: 14000 Kelvin | Shutter Speed: 1" | ISO 250

Lighting: 18000 Kelvin | Shutter Speed: 1" | ISO 320

Lighting: 20000 Kelvin | Shutter Speed: 1.6" | ISO 250

 

[Misled]

If you get a reflection with the flash, the lens can't be against the glass.